Gong Kechang (1933- ) is a famous cultural expert on the Fu literary style and a leading figure in the field of Chinese Fu study. He serves as a professor and doctoral supervisor of the Department of Chinese at Shandong University.

In 1959, Gong Kechang graduated from the Department of Chinese at Shandong University and enrolled in a graduate program for ancient Chinese literature.

Influenced by his supervisor Lu Kanru (1903-1978), a well-known scholar in Chinese literature, Gong began his research on Fu in the Han Dynasty (206 BC-AD 220), or Han Fu, a literary form of sentimental or descriptive composition with rhyme.

Since the 1980s, Gong, who taught at Shandong University, devoted himself to a systematic study of Fu with rich academic passion and vigor. Early in 1981, Gong published On Han Fu in the Journal of Literature, History and Philosophy which affirmed Han Fu’s significant role. In 1984, he published the book Fu Study in the Han Dynasty and became the first scholar to propose the idea that Han Fu represented a literary awakening at the time.

Based on literature collections and annotation, Gong also conducted his own research into representative Fu works and summarized the law of development in Fu study by publishing a series of macroscopic and conclusive papers.

Through his Fu study, Gong built an academic friendship with David Knechtges, an American Sinologist and scholar, which became a memorable story in the academic community. Gong explained that Knechtges read Fu Study in the Han Dynasty by chance and took the initiative to contact Gong. In 1988, supported by Knechtges and other Sinologists, the Committee on Scholarly Communications with the People’s Republic of China at the US National Academy of Sciences invited Gong to the University of Washington, Harvard University and other famous American universities to give lectures on Han Fu.

Gong’s lectures received a warm welcome by American Sinologists. Knechtges translated his lecture Studies on the Han Fu into English and published it in the United States as one of their collaborative projects.